Category Archives: Illustration

Going beyond simple lettering and pictures, airplane nose art was a form of power, good luck, ownership and a blushing reminder of home for the crews.

The practice of embellishing personalized insignias and decorations on military fighter aircraft was said to have originated with Italian and German pilots with the first recorded piece of nose art being a sea monster painted on the nose of an Italian flying boat in 1913. The idea must have taken on because around that time, the Swedish pioneering aviator, “the flying Baron” Carl Cederström purchased a Donnet-Lévêque sea-biplane for his flying school, Scandinavian Aviatik AB and similarly applied a fish-scaled motif to the craft. Cederström named it “Flygfisken” (Flying Fish).

The old maxim “If it ain’t broke, don’t change it” holds true for Absolut vodka. Since 1980, the vodka manufacturer has been running essentially the same print advertising campaign where the ads in the campaign make sly reference to Absolut’s distinctive stubby neck and see-through label bottle with tongue-in-cheek variations to the two word tagline.

DDB Worldwide, Singapore’s new double-take print ads of Breast Cancer Foundation of Singapore suggest that perhaps women should focus on health and have their breasts checked rather than obsess about their big butts, pimples and bad hair days. As breast cancer can strike at any age (just under 7% of all breast cancer cases occur in women under 40 years old.), women of every age should be aware of their personal risk factors for breast cancer.

Commented illustrator Andy Yang: “Interesting project I was involved in recently. Painting on a LIVE MODEL, graphic style! Interesting paint that doesn’t dry but the challenge is to paint on contoured body skin. It’s tricky but once you get the hang of it, it’s ok. Sketch and idea was confirmed on paper with the creative team. 3 day schedule locked down at Republic Studios because each piece took about half day to complete which includes touch ups on the body paint and photography. This job was really smooth sailing because the creative team really knew what they wanted. Special thanks to the team at DDB Singapore, Republic Studios and the model. This is one of those jobs that you need a team to pull off.”